‘Shutter Island’ burdened by a perplexing plot

Michael HuckabyMovie reviews

Published 6:00 pm, Wednesday, February 24, 2010

“Shutter Island” is Martin Scorsese’s pretentious tribute to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo, “a classic1958 psychological thriller starring Jimmy Stewart. More obvious — other than when a certain character appears or the blood flows in vivid color — the style and tone are intentionally reminiscent of the grainy noirs that Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum did so well.

Burdened with a perplexing plot that by design deceives from the outset, many audiences will find Scorsese’s latest film inexplicable beyond the limits of good storytelling and fair play. A shameless hoodwinker based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”), Scorsese crafts superb visuals and atmospherics, while the performances he orchestrates are extraordinary. Thus many of the scenes are haunting and quite memorable.

A period piece ironically set in 1954, Hitchcock directed favorites Stewart and Grace Kelly that very same year in “Rear Window,” a thoroughly enjoyable, masterfully told spellbinder that appears on many “favorite” lists. Conversely, this surreal expressionistic psychodrama — the fourth collaboration of Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Departed”) - fails to achieve the greatness the director seeks to emulate largely because the screenplay does not lend itself to an unreliable narrator.

The opening would be a perfect lead-in if not later proven to be grossly deceptive. Wearing battered fedoras and G-man trench coats, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new junior partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are in rough seas aboard a ferry from Boston. Bound for a federal institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, Teddy becomes dreadfully seasick. Despite an approaching hurricane, the pair has been assigned to investigate the mysterious escape of the infamous Rachel Soldana (Emily Mortimer and later Patricia Clarkson), who drowned her three children.

After both marshals are required to surrender their sidearms and committed to staying the stormy night, excruciating migraines plague Teddy. Nightmares and flashbacks reveal his back-story. A World War II veteran haunted by the atrocities of the Dachau concentration camp he liberated, his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) died in 1952 in an apartment fire set by a janitor, a pyromaniac he suspects is incarcerated somewhere on the island under an alias.

When the hurricane smacks the island, the chaos allows other dangerous inmates to escape. This provides the marshals the opportunity to snoop. What Teddy finds in the Gothic old fort appears at first to be the answer he is seeking but leads to a disclosure greater than any one man should have to bear.

Overly ambitious and with more bewildering twists and turns than the egotistical Scorsese can effectively juggle, his best work is with his actors. Though not crucial to the story, DiCaprio — empathetic and in almost every scene — speaks with an authentic sounding blue collar Boston accent. But when Williams appears from beyond the grave, she steals the show.